I cannot emphasize enough the importance of teaching kids to work in groups.  There are several reasons that using groups is so important. Employers today want collaborators.  They want people who can work with other people and be highly productive and efficient.  If an employee doesn’t work well with others, they can easily be replaced with someone who does.  The job market is highly competitive.  Another reason that groups are so important is because people learn from talking to other people.  For many students, this is the way they learn best.  Human beings are social and we learn through social experiences so group work can be a very efficient way for students to learn new material.

These are critical skills and teachers cannot justify running classrooms that don’t incorporate productive group work.  So if you don’t run groups because “there is always a social loafer” and “one person does all the work” or “you hated working in groups when you were in school”, you have to get over it and learn how to structure groups in your classroom so that they work. It is not enough to just put kids in groups.  Running effective and productive groups requires a substantial amount of structure and planning in a number of areas; however, students can be trained to work in groups and if done right from the outset, group work will require less and less planning on your part as you keep using groups in your classroom.   I’m going to write this blog in two parts.  In this first part I will define the elements needed.  In the second blog, I will provide specific examples of how each element can be structured.

Elements of Cooperative Learning

1.  Positive interdependence is when a group has the feeling that they will sink or swim together.  If one member fails then all members fail.   One member is dependent on other members in order to succeed.

2.  Individual Accountability is structured when each member is individually responsible for learned material.  The purpose of the group work is to learn a certain skill or content and then each student in the group is individually responsible for proving that they learned the content or skill. 

3.  Social skills are the collaborative work skills that you plan to teach and assess during group work.  There is any number of skills and you can choose based on age/ grade or areas of improvement needed.

4.  Group processing is the process of identifying what worked and didn’t work in groups.  This can be done as a whole group or in small groups; it can be done in writing or orally.  It depends on what makes sense for the groups. 

5.  Face to face interactions takes place when participants are physically facing each other and are participating in a task that requires working together.   If the project can be done alone than it may as well be done alone.

These five elements are the framework that can be used to develop structures within groups that will promote productivity.  The reason I use the word tools is that it is possible for groups to run without all these elements but each one of these elements provides a way to improve the structure of a group if it is not functioning. When you are first running groups, it is important to have as many structures in place as possible.  You can always eliminate structure but it is very difficult to go back and add it after the fact.  In the beginning, you are setting expectations, so be particular.  Kids will try to sit with their desks not touching each other.  They will attempt to listen to music while they are in groups.  They will ask for your help without asking group members first.  Do not allow these seemingly frivolous behaviors to slide.  Remember that we are teaching them how to behave.  How would it fly if you put earbuds in and listened to your iPod during a staff meeting? Expect them to behave how you want them to behave after they are fully trained and have been doing this for a long time and they will rise to the occasion but they will test the limits in the beginning.  Imagine that you are late for class.  When you show up, all students are in their groups and they are completing their work.  You want it to be so second nature that they can do it without you so it will be a lot of work in the beginning. Explore the resources below and then read the follow-up blog with examples of each element embedded in a lesson.

Videos:

http://pachyderm.cdl.edu/elixr-stories/active-learning-chemistry/

Examples and other resources:

http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/example.html

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/coopcollab/index.html

http://www.intime.uni.edu/coop_learning/ch4/